Coffin Bay National Park

My last activation for the Friday, 14th June, 2013, was the Coffin Bay National Park. I was a bit puffed out after 2 SOTA activations during the day, so I thought a quick activation of the park would be good before heading back to Port Lincoln, for a feed and a beer or two.

Coffin Bay National Park is situated about 46 kms west of Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula, and about 703 kms west of Adelaide. The park consists of about 31,000 hectares. The beautiful town of Coffin Bay is located near the entrance to the National Park. Coffin Bay is renowned for its oyster farming, and I couldn’t resist buying a few dozen fresh oysters. Coffin Bay was named by explorer Matthew Flinders after his friend the naval officer, Isaac Coffin.

The Coffin Bay NP features a long peninsula with a sheltered bay, coastal dunes, swamps and a spectacular coastline of islands, reefs, limestone cliffs and white surf beaches.

To the east of Point Avoid are Almonta and Gunyah Beaches, used for surfing. Reefs extend out to sea from Point Avoid to Golden Island with Price Island further out.

There is a great variety of wildlife in the national park. Numerous seabirds can be seen including White-bellied Sea Eagles and Ospreys was well as various albatross and petrels.

The area covered by the national park is also classified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area. It supports over 1% of the world populations of Pied and Sooty Oystercatchers, as well as significant numbers of Fairy Terns, Hooded Plovers, Western Whipbirds, Rock Parrots, and Blue breasted Fairy wrens.

I pulled into an area of the park called Middle Well and started setting up the equipment. I almost had to move because of a rather inquisitive emu. The weather was holding up okay, but there was the threat of rain out to the east.

I ended up working a total of 9 stations on 40m SSB, before having to pack up due to the weather.

The following stations were worked:- Col VK5HCF; Nev VK5WG; Peter VK3PF; Brian VK5FMID; David VK5KC; Larry VK5LY; John VK5BJE; David VK5UG; and John VK5FTCT.